I pick up the Twain book and leaf through its pages. The book falls open to a page with a corner folded down. Someone underlined a sentence halfway down: Pity is for the living, envy is for the dead. I read it a couple of times, soaking up the idea. Wow! Who was the depresso with the pen?
I put the book down and turn to explore the rest of my space.
Green plaid curtains hang on each side of a wide window that looks out on Kay’s barn and the hillside where horses nose the grass. Some of them have moved to the shade of a wide-branched tree, where they huddle like they’re having some kind of meeting.
Way past Kay’s barn, and on the other side of her fence, is a small shack. It leans to one side, and its roof buckles in the center, ready to crumble in on itself. One good push and that place goes splat. On one side of the wobbly place sits a square block foundation. And at one end, steps lead from a weedy brick path up to an empty door frame. It’s the only upright part of what looks like it used to be a house. At the back of that falling-to-pieces property stands a tacky-looking gray barn. It shows no signs of paint and has lots of missing boards. Three horses line up alongside the shady barn wall—a black one, a spotted brown and white, and a gray with a deep swayback. The black one stands taller than the rest, but even from this far, I can see they’re a sad-looking bunch. Their heads droop like it’s too hard to hold them up, and their ribs show along their sides. None look as good as Kay’s. Hers are shiny and fleshy, with long tight muscles hugged close by their skin. Any guy would be happy to strut around with pecs like the ones on those horses.
Kenny walks out of Kay’s barn. He holds his fingers to his mouth and whistles so loud I can hear him from inside the house, even with the windows shut. A reddish-brown horse gallops out from under the shade tree and stops in front of the old man. The horse lowers its head. Kenny steps onto a fallen log and in one swing sits on the horse’s bare back. Now I understand why his legs form an arch. They’re the exact shape of a horse. Together they shoot out of sight—Old Spit’s on the range.
I pull the bottle of Mom’s sleeping pills and the ratty envelope out of the paper bag. The lamp table has a drawer, so I stuff the pills in the back and tuck the thin blade wrapped in toilet paper under the bottle. I sit on the edge of the bed and take out my stack of old library cards from the envelope. Dealing them like a poker hand, I spread them across the quilt. This is a map of where I’ve lived: Houston, L.A, Barstow, Bakersfield, Reno. Ah, yes, Reno. That’s where the gambling bug bit Mom, and from then on, there wasn’t a casino she didn’t love. That’s how we wound up in Las Vegas.
The loud knock on the door shoots me upright. For a minute I’m back in Vegas, ready to face Tuan with his hand out for the rent.
“Shawna?” It’s Kay.
I wait, but when she doesn’t open the door, I get up and let her in.
“Come on. Kenny says you’ll need some pocket money when school starts, so he’ll put you on salary.”
“On salary. That means work, right?”
“You got it.”
“What kind?” I back against the wall and put my foot on it to brace myself.
She does one of those long blinks that flash fed up. “On a horse ranch we work with horses. Does that surprise you?”
“I don’t work with horses.” I want that clear, so I might as well lay it out right up front.
“I see.” She leans against the open door. “Maybe you mean that you’ve never worked with horses before now, but since you have the opportunity, you will.”
“No. That’s not what I mean. Not even close.”
“That’s too bad.” She folds her arms across her chest and stares out the window.”Because on this horse ranch, if you don’t do your chores during the day, not only do you not get pocket money, you don’t eat, either.”
Now I fold my arms across my chest. “I guess I’ll just have to call the child protective people and tell them about this.”
“The phone’s in my office.” She walks away. “Tell Marla Perdy hello for me when you get her.”
“Who?”
“Marla Perdy. She’s in charge of the County Welfare Agency. You know, child abuse, that sort of thing. You explain how you got here, how I’m putting you to work, and paying you. She’s very understanding.”
“Shit!”
“Did you say something?” Kay looks over her shoulder at me.
“No.” What’s the use? I’m stuck in this happy acres horse camp until I can figure a way out.
“So, are we going to the barn?” she asks, like I’ve got a choice.
Sigh. “Yes.” Still I wonder what she’d do if I slammed the door and didn’t budge. Would she actually kick me out?
I follow my leggy grandmother out the back door, down the steps, and across the yard toward the barn.
That one question that’s been niggling around in my brain, ever since I read Mom’s note, starts to niggle again. I think I should ask her now. “Hey!”
She stops and turns, fixing me with a sour look. “Kay? Grandma?” I’m not sure what to call her, but Hey does not sit well, I can tell.
“Call me Kay.”
“Right. Well, Kay, I was wondering about something. Like, are you Jackie’s mom or my dad’s mom?”
Now her expression shifts to hard, and the rest of her goes heavy. I imagine her sinking into the ground. “I’m your father’s mother.” She barely says the last word when she turns around and heads toward the barn again.
Hmmm. So it was her son that ditched Mom and me. Well, she doesn’t want to talk about my parents. That’s flat out clear, so I’ll wait to ask the other question: Was his name Rick or Nic?
Chapter 7
Shawna
I’m backed against the barn wall, as far as I can get from a horse that’s glaring at me. I’ve never been so close to anything this big and smelly before. Well, this smelly, yes, but this big, no.
Do horses eat people?
Kenny stands with one hand on each hip, his mouth working hard on a piece of what he calls chaw. The horse the size of a casino stands by his side.
“I hate horses. Look at this one’s eyes. He feels the same about me.”
“Makes no difference to me, Missy.” He spits into the bushes. “You can love ’em or you can hate ’em. In either case, you are gonna learn to curry their backsides without gettin’ your butt kicked. Comprende?”
“Oh, man,” I groan. “I am so not a horse person.”
“You’ll catch on.” He holds out a brush to me.
I shake my head and drag the toes of my shoes into the dirt. “No way. Look man,
I came here because I had to, but I don’t have to stay.” I fold my arms over my chest.
He ignores me. “This here is Stud.”
“I don’t care if he’s King Tut. I’m not touching him.”
“Scared?”
“No,” I shout, and the horse dances sideways. “Damn!” I jump out of the way, just in time to not get crushed against the barn wall.
Kenny hurls another arc of dark spit into his favorite bush. “Just a tad skeered?” The old fart laughs.
“Give me the damned brush.”
He tosses it to me. “You just learned your first lesson, Missy. Don’t yell around a critter that’s four times your size. Now here’s another one for you. This horse kicks like hell when you swipe his haunch in just the right spot.” Kenny spits again and walks away.
“Hey! Wait up, Poncho,” I shout.
He stops but doesn’t turn around.
“Okay. Please wait,... Mr. Kenny.”
“If you got any questions, the name’s Kenny Fargo to you, Missy.” He looks at me over his shoulder.
“All right. How in the hell do I do this... this curry thing without getting my ass kicked, Kenny Fargo?”
“Thought you’d never ask.”
Kenny walks back to me, takes the brush from my hand and begins a slow even stroke over Stud’s quivering back. “When you come to this part,” he points to t
he horse’s right hind leg, “you go real gentle. The other side don’t matter. But treat this side like raw nerve.” He holds the brush out to me again. “Give it a try, Missy.”
“The name’s Shawna.” I snatch the brush out of his hand.
Stud’s hindquarters don’t give me nearly as much trouble as Mom’s choice of boyfriends. The horse shivers under the brush as I come down his right leg, but he doesn’t shy away or kick me into the side of the barn, which I half expected. Kenny watches but doesn’t say anything. I decide the whole place is filled with people who don’t talk much and horses that wait until your guard is down before they’d sink their teeth into your butt.
“How’s that?” I ask when I’ve brushed a three-sixty around Stud.
“That’s one.” Kenny Fargo takes Stud’s lead and pulls him back into his stall.
One? My arms already ache, and the old man’s bringing out another horse.
Kay strides past, leading a gray horse toward the barn. Her long-legged walk matches the gray’s, as though they are both the same kind of animal—one with only two legs, the other with the right number.
She looks at me, but I get the feeling she doesn’t see me at all. It’s like she’s picturing somebody else. It creeps me out and I turn away.
Kenny Fargo leads out three more horses, one after the other, each with twitchy butts and big teeth. I do the curry thing while he supervises, then he puts them back in their stalls.
“How many of these do I have to curry?” I shout at his back. Kenny doesn’t answer me.
He walks another horse out and hooks its leash or lead—whatever they call the thing—to a hook on the side of the barn. Then he leans back while I brush and brush and brush. I’ve almost forgotten I’d asked him anything when he says, “All together, we got fifteen. The good news is I already done the others today, and the mules don’t get curried much at all.” He smiles a wide brown smile and runs his hand over the horse’s side. “Looks good. I think you’re getting the hang of this curry business.” He leads this last horse to its stall. When he comes back, he’s carrying a long pitchfork.
“Now comes the real easy part.” He puts the pitchfork into my right hand. “Fresh grass hay is over there.” He points to the corner in the back of the barn. “All eighteen of these beauties need a couple of flakes.”
I must look blank because he says, “That’s a good forkful. Then ’yer done for the night, Miss... Shawna.”
“Where are you going?” I yell. He’s already around the corner of the barn, but he ducks his head back and looks at me.
“My trailer. Got some things to do before dinner. You got a problem with that?”
“Wouldn’t matter if I did.” I dig the pitchfork into the pile of hay.
Okay. Mark Twain is right. Pity is for the living. I understand envying a dead guy, who doesn’t have to do what I’m doing—a lifetime of currying skittery horses, forking hay, and trying to dodge Kenny Fargo’s spit... that is pitiful. Not to mention how my arms feel. They hang at my sides like sticks pegged at the shoulders. I’ve carried so many of Mom’s suitcases up rickety stairs and down again that I know something about being tired. But this is... actual pain. And all due to those super-sized animals that don’t do diddly all day, except eat the hay that I have to pitch into their stalls. I’ve got to figure a way back to Vegas, ’cause this deal really sucks.
“I need a break.” The gray in the stall next to me nods and snorts at me. “At least something around here listens,” I say to her.
I walk outside, breathe in the fresh air, and exhale the smell of hay and horses. From the barn I can see the kitchen windows, with Kay passing back and forth—looking like the queen in her castle. My first dinner with Grandma: This is going to be interesting. I just hope she doesn’t feed me what she feeds her horses—I’ve really had it with straw!
Chapter 8
Kay
In the kitchen, Kay pretended that peeling the potatoes for this dinner was like doing it any other night. She filled her big white enamel pot with cold water, then carefully peeled each tuber, sculpting it from its gritty skin. She dug out the eyes and plunged the potato into the pot, as she’d done since helping her mother cook for their ranch hands, when she’d learned about cooking first hand.
Kay believed in having regularity in her life—setting up systems that made the day run smoothly. For over sixteen years she’d managed the ranch, paying her bills and building a life she liked to think was solid and respectable. She’d never been bored with this rancher’s life, and at the end of every day, she was always too tired to be bored. But she’d given up being happy when Nic died. And then, after Peter left, well, what was there to be happy about?
The back porch door slammed. Kay knew it wouldn’t be Kenny. He knew better than to slam her doors.
She looked at the strange girl who stared back at her.
“You all done?” Kay asked.
“More than done. I’m beat.” Shawna slouched into the kitchen and dropped onto one of the chairs. She stretched out her long legs.
“One rule around here is you take off your boots and leave them on the porch when you come in from the barn.”
“These are all I’ve got.” Shawna held up one foot. The sole of her tennis shoe was covered with barn muck and straw.
“Well then, take them off. We’ll go into town tomorrow and buy you some boots. For now, there’re some clean slippers by the back door you can use.”
Shawna shrugged, pulled off her sneakers, and tossed them onto the back porch. They landed with a clunk and sent the muck scattering onto the floor.
Kay clenched her teeth. “I put towels in your bathroom, so why don’t you go get cleaned up? Dinner will be on the table in an hour. And, Shawna, don’t slam the doors when you come and go.”
“Another rule?”
Kay nodded.
“Seems like a lot of rules for one place to have.” Shawna shuffled through the kitchen and disappeared down the hall, her feet dragging across the wood floor.
“That’s gonna be a tough filly to break in.” Kenny leaned against the kitchen door.
“How long you been eavesdropping?” Kay asked as she turned up the heat under the potatoes.
He pushed away from the door and went to the sink. “She can do the work. That ain’t the problem. It’s the charming attitude that’s gonna be fun to handle.”
“If you got any ideas on what to do, don’t sit on your backside and keep it to yourself, okay?”
“I see she’s brought your crabby side out,” he said, drying his hands and pushing his boots off.
“Sorry.” She had no right to snap at him, but she did it now and then. There was nobody else to snap at, so Kenny Fargo got it, took it, and made it better.
She reached into the cupboard for the dishes. I almost turned him away, she thought. She shook her head when she remembered Kenny on the lower back step, looking up at her as she stood like a suspicious sentry at her kitchen door.
“I need a place to work and park my trailer,” he’d said. “I’ll be glad to pay for what I use in the way of water and electricity.”
“No. I... don’t think so.” She’d stepped back and pushed the screen door closed.
He took off his hat and held it in front of him, like an old-fashioned suitor in a cowboy western. “I love two things: horses and good whiskey,” he said. “And I never mix those pleasures.”
She recognized the honesty in his words and in the way he looked at her. She also recognized how much it cost him to beg. So she hired him and later that day, she fought to keep him when Peter told her that Kenny had to go.
“You don’t know a thing about the man, Kay. Are you insane?” Peter yelled when she told him what she’d done.
“We could use the help. What harm can it do? He can park his trailer behind the barn, so you won’t even have to see it.” She could still hear her voice—the way it sounded—a bit scared and yet firm. Every fight they’d had that year, she’d heard her v
oice always a little fearful, yet becoming firmer with each argument.
“He’s got the look of war about him. One of those derelict Vietnam vets with no end of problems.” Peter grasped the back of the kitchen chair, his knuckles turning white.
“He stays. We need him.”
He’d smiled at her, his lips tight and the message bitter. Then he’d left the kitchen without saying another word.
“Leave the past where it should be. You’ve got enough to manage in the present,” she mumbled to herself.
“You say something?” Kenny called from the back porch.
“Just thinking out loud.” She lifted two plates from the cupboard and set them on the table. Then, shaking her head, she took down a third one and pulled up another chair. So her perfectly ordered life had taken a turn, and now she was headed down a road that had more ruts than the one leading to her property. How was she going to manage a sixteen-year-old girl? And this wasn’t just any teenaged girl. Shawna may not have come with suitcases, but she sure came with some heavy baggage. This little gal was an iceberg, and Kay felt like the Titanic.
Chapter 9
Shawna
“Take a bath, Shawna. Curry the horse, Shawna. Don’t slam the doors, Shawna. Do this, Shawna, do that.” There are more rules around this place than at the blackjack tables. I close my eyes and lean against the bathroom door.
I do not care.
I do not care.
I can’t shake that song out of my head. I saw this Yoga class on TV once, where all the people were trying to turn themselves into pretzels. When they weren’t doing that, they were sitting around chanting “ohm” over and over—looking like they were zoning out. Well, that doesn’t do it for me. I do not care. I do not care. Now that makes sense.
I look into the bathroom mirror and sing-song my mantra. Dorky old me shrugs back. Life is getting better, though. Here the mirror isn’t cracked, so at least I can see the whole dork.
“Well,” I say to the face in the mirror, “I do care about one thing—the way I smell.” If I’m not careful, I’ll be the one needing a currycomb run down my backside. My hands smell like... “Ugh!” Horse!